Wednesday, December 26, 2012

If you were here on Sunday, then you
know this sermon is sort of Part 2 to what I began that morning.But don’t worry – you don’t have to have
heard Part 1 for Part 2 to make sense.Part 1 was about the question, How can we get ready to celebrate
Christmas after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut?Part 2 is about a harder question:Where is
God this Christmas if something so awful can happen?

On Christmas Eve, we like to hear
stories.I’ve often written stories for sermons
on Christmas Eve.There’s something
about this night, a chord of memory long-played from childhood, that makes us
want to gather around the fire with a mug of hot chocolate (or something
stronger), basking in the warmth of the love of family and the love of
God.I can still see my family gathered
around our living room on Christmas Eve when I was a child, and I can feel the
warmth of the fire toasting my back as I sat on the hearth – the spot for the
youngest in our household because the older people got the chairs.We talked, and sipped whatever our mugs held,
and got ready to head off for midnight mass to welcome God’s love into the
world once again.

That was my Christmas Eve from
childhood.This Christmas Eve, things
feel different.This isn’t a
sipping-cocoa-‘round-the-fire sort of Christmas Eve – not with our nation and
our own hearts still aching from the shooting in Newtown.This is a Christmas Eve when sentimentality
feels even cheaper than usual.This is a
Christmas Eve when we can only imagine how the people of Newtown must be
reeling, trying to figure out how they’re supposed to celebrate the birth of
the Christ child only 10 days after losing so many children of their own.

In fact, this is a Christmas Eve when some
of us might have come to church trying to figure out a few things about God,
too.If you’ve come here tonight with
serious questions on your heart, know that you’re not alone.If you’ve come here tonight even with
something of a chip on your shoulder, know that you’re in good company.I imagine there are many people, even folks
of long-standing faith, who’d like to ask some serious questions of God
tonight.At the top of the list might
be, “Where were you in Newtown?”Or
maybe, “How can such awful things happen to such innocent people?”Or maybe, “Why didn’t you do something?”

On a night when those questions hang in
our hearts, I guess I do want to tell a couple of stories after all.First is the story of one of the victims at
Sandy Hook Elementary.Of course, all
the adults who died at the school that day are rightfully remembered as heroes,
giving their lives for the children they served.But one woman’s story particularly strikes me
this night – Anne Marie Murphy.

Ms. Murphy was a teacher’s aide at Sandy
Hook, assigned to help special-needs kids in a first-grade class.Ms. Murphy was a wife and mother of four, a
strong Christian who loved to paint and who was planning a big celebration with
her extended family over Christmas.That
morning, she was with working with Dylan Hockley, a 6-year-old who struggled
with autism.When the gunman burst into
the classroom, Dylan Hockley was hit, along with the teacher, Vicki Soto, and
several other children in that class.What stands out to me about Ms. Murphy, the teacher’s aide, is where her
body was found.She had apparently been
nearby Dylan because she had pulled him close, using her own body to try to
shield him from the gunfire.In that
act, she lost her own life.1,2,3

Why do I tell you such a sad story on
this holy night?Because, in a deep
sense, it’s the Christmas story.It’s
the Christian story.

In our culture, the Christmas story
tends to come across like the images on our Christmas cards – a loving couple
cast in soft light; cuddly lambs around a manger; a baby glowing in divine
light, wrapped in blankets and resting comfortably on clean, warm straw.

Now, none of us has video from that
night 2,000 years ago, but I think the scene probably didn’t look quite like that.Two thousand years ago, this child was born
to impoverished, unmarried peasants.They’d been forced to travel on foot the 70 miles from their home in
Nazareth to the father’s hometown of Bethlehem because government authorities
commanded it.It wouldn’t have been easy
in any case, but it was all the harder because the young woman was about to
deliver their child.When they arrived,
the only place they could find to stay was in a cave, sleeping with the animals
that were kept there.And if you’ve ever
mucked out a stall, you know how clean that cave most likely wasn’t.This couple’s situation wasn’t all that remarkable.Thousands of peasants would have been
affected by the Roman government’s census, and most of them would have been
enduring similar hardships.

But the difference, of course, was the
child.This wasn’t just another peasant
baby, as likely to die as to live in its first few hours and days.This peasant baby was the Son of God.Now, you’ve heard that said so many times
before that it may not mean much to hear it again tonight.But let me say it again:That was the Son of God lying in the muck of
that stable.

Messengers from heaven came to other
peasants that night, sheep herders outside town, and told them a Savior had
been born – the anointed ruler, the Lord, the true king who would reveal the
Roman Emperor as the imposter he was.But this divine king was lying in a feed trough, and his parents were
just hoping they’d find something to eat that night.

To the sheep herders, the message must
have been literally unbelievable.It
didn’t make sense.How could it be “glad
tidings of great joy” (Luke 1:10) that another peasant baby had come into a
dark, uncaring world?He certainly
couldn’t have seemed like a savior.He
looked like he was the one who needed saving.

Thirty years or so later, he’d look very
much to be in need of saving once again.He’d be beaten and killed by the worldly authorities he’d come to
challenge.And on that dark Friday,
people gathered around would ask, where was God?Why didn’t God come to save this young man
who who’d worked miracles and who called out to his Father from the cross?

On the floor in Newtown, Connecticut, a
teacher’s aide lay shot and killed by a madman.And again we ask, Where was God?Why didn’t God come and save the children at Sandy Hook Elementary and
the teachers and staff who protected them?

This is the mystery
of Christmas: In Jesus, God was lying there in the dirty straw.In Jesus, God was being beaten by the
Romans.In Jesus, God was dying on the
cross.And at Sandy Hook Elementary, Jesus
was shielding a 6-year-old, trying to save a beloved child from the power of
sin and death.

The mystery of Christmas is that God
saves us from sin and death by stepping directly into the line of fire.God loves us, and all of creation, so deeply
that God saves the world from the inside out.As a baby, vulnerable to everything, God chose to enter into our
experience and make it God’s own.The
pain we know, God knows.The fear we
face, God faced.The death we seek to
avoid at all costs, God chose.Like the
teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary, God saw us in need and decided to act, no
matter the cost.

But what transforms this from simply a
story of noble suffering to the story
of salvation is the fact that for this baby born in the dirty straw, death was
not the end.Jesus’ death toppled death
from its throne.Enduring it, he
defeated it – and gave to us that victory, as well.

Anne Marie Murphy knew that truth.She staked her life on it.For Christians, death is not the end because
God chose to defeat sin and death from the inside out, stepping directly into
it to lift us out of it.

In our own small ways, we, too, know that
we’re called to walk the path of Anne Marie Murphy.We probably won’t find ourselves called to
shield a child from a bullet.But we
most certainly will find ourselves called to love people extravagantly in a
thousand smaller ways.We may not lay
down our lives, but we can hold out our hands.We can give when the world might take.We can cry with someone who mourns.We can offer a coat to someone shivering in the cold.We can commit ourselves to honor this truth:
that all children deserve the chance to
learn free from violence, free from hunger, free from systems that bind them in
despair.As Anne Marie Murphy chose to
act as Christ, so must we.God loves us
enough to defeat sin and death from the inside out.Now, Jesus asks us to return the favor.

At the end of the order of service,
you’ll find a poem.4It
wasn’t written in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, but it might as well have
been.On this holy night, let me leave
you with this:

Sunday, December 23, 2012

It’s been a little more than a week now
since the murders of 27 people in Newtown, Connecticut.We’ve heard about events there we can barely
fathom: an insane young man blasting his way into a school; teachers doing math
problems in one moment and shielding children from bullets in the next; funeral
after funeral for 6- and 7-year-olds.

Now, as the days give us some distance
from the initial shock, we begin to try to place this horror in some larger
context.There are several contexts to
choose from, at least based on what we hear in the media; and the common
denominator seems to be identifying which of society’s failings we should blame.Some look at the shootings and blame public
policy on gun control.Some blame
inadequate mental health services.Some blame
violent movies and video games.Our
culture and our government offer plenty of failures for us to work on, but my
hunch is that blame for this tragedy doesn’t reduce to any one of them.And with so much pontificating in the media
about what’s right and what’s wrong with American public policy, you certainly
don’t need another talking head in the pulpit this morning.

Instead, here in church, it’s enough to
try to figure out what to make of a liturgical moment that doesn’t seem to fit
the world around it:the joyful
anticipation of our Savior’s birth in a time of deep and tragic grief.I can’t begin to imagine how the people of
Newtown, Connecticut, are preparing their hearts for Christmas this year.What does the fourth Sunday of Advent have to
say to us in a week of funerals for first graders?How in the world do we celebrate Christmas this year?

Well, consider what I’m about to say as
Part 1 of a possible answer.Part 2 will
come tomorrow night, at least at the 8 and 11 o’clock services. Part 1 is about us:How does God ask us to respond to a world
where children may be murdered as they sit in their classrooms?Then, on Christmas Eve, we’ll ask the harder
question:Where is God in a world like that?

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, our Gospel
reading is about Mary’s visit to her cousin, Elizabeth.Mary and Elizabeth are about to bring
children into this world – both inexplicably, but for different reasons.Elizabeth is old and barren; she and
Zechariah have been unable to have children for decades.At the other end of the spectrum is Mary – a
girl who has no business being pregnant, given that she’s never been with a
man.Yet, in the reading just before
today’s Gospel, which we heard in Lessons and Carols last week, Mary receives a
visit from the angel Gabriel, who tells her that not only is she pregnant;
she’s pregnant with the Son of God, the one who will reign as king and save
God’s people.“Do not be afraid, Mary,”
the angel says (Luke 1:30).Yeah, right.

And yet, at the end of this astonishing
announcement comes an even more astonishing reply from the unwed teenaged
mother:“Let it be with me according to
your word,” she says (1:38).Mary hears
an implausible story of God’s desire to save people, to deliver them from the
oppression of Roman rule, to unveil an entirely new set of ground rules, to
reveal God’s own kingdom on earth – and Mary says, “Yes.”Ridiculously, in the eyes of the world, Mary
chooses to be God’s primary instrument – someone who seems an entirely
inadequate beacon of hope for a world that doesn’t even deserve that much blessing.

As she and her cousin celebrate the
astounding news they’ve both received, Mary lifts up a song of praise that honors
both God’s foolishly hopeful plan and her ridiculous role in it.She begins with one of the most amazing
statements in all of Scripture, something we’ve heard so many times that it may
not strike us as it should.Mary says, “My
soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46).Now, think about that a minute.You can hear that word “magnify” in a small and poetic way, simply
meaning that Mary praises or glorifies God.But it can mean much more.In the
Greek text, the word is a form of the verb megalynō,
which literally means to enlarge or to amplify (http://www.teknia.com/greek-dictionary/megalyno). What a thought: that Mary’s spirit, and that our spirits, might enlarge or amplify
the sovereign Lord of the universe.Who is
she to think such a thing?Who are we to
do such a thing?

Well, think for a minute about magnifying
in another context – using a magnifying glass.Remember how you played with a magnifying glass when you were a kid?At least I did.Used one way, the glass enlarges something
small.It lets you look at an ant
crawling by and really see the head, thorax, and abdomen in detail you could
never make out on your own.It lets you
see the wonder of creation with new eyes.But little kids also know a magnifying glass can be used another
way.In the sun of a summer day, you can
take your magnifying glass, hold it just the right distance from the ground,
and focus the sun’s rays into a tiny point, concentrating the light so much
that you can burn through a piece of paper.Or, for that matter, you can burn to death that little ant you were
studying so intently a few minutes before.The instrument that magnifies is also the instrument that focuses light
with such clarity, precision, and intensity that it can set the world on fire.

And there’s the rub.We can set the world on fire with the power
of God made manifest in ordinary people who choose to say “yes” and make love
bear flesh.Or, we can set the world on
fire by twisting that power God shares with us, setting loose the demons within
us that long to be gods themselves.

What does God ask of us?In a world where a twisted killer can steal
the life from 27 innocent people in a matter of seconds, what does God ask of us?God asks us to join Mary in magnifying the Lord.

Through the magnifying glass of Mary’s
womb, the light of God’s salvation was focused into the ultimate act of divine
healing, as God’s saving nature took on flesh and bones to dwell among us.That child would live out God’s shepherding
rule, bringing divine power to earth in a kingship of saving love.Mary chose to be the magnifying glass that
set the world on fire, aflame with God’s own Spirit.

And through the magnifying glass of
other human hearts – yours and mine – we still focus the light of God’s
salvation into specific saving acts.We
show God’s healing power when we turn away from “the thoughts of [our own]
hearts” – when we, who think we’re powerful, come down from our thrones and
lift up the lowly (Luke 1:51-52).We set
the world on fire with God’s Spirit when we “fill the hungry with good things”
(Luke 1:53), when we act “in remembrance of God’s mercy” promised to us across
the generations (Luke 1:54-55).

Every day, angels visit us and ask us to say, “Yes.”Every day, we have to choose how we will use
our freedom.Every day, God asks us to
help invert the worldly order, the apparent victory of death over life, of
darkness over light.Every day, God asks
us to bear salvation into humanity’s corruption of God’s intent. Every day, God asks us to scatter the darkness
of human agendas and twisted priorities so that the light of God’s saving purposes
can shine through.

Even though this is a world where
killers sometimes have their way, we must remember that they will not win.Neither those who spew bullets nor those who
spew hate will have the last word.In
the darkness of this world, God asks us – remarkably, even us – to embody a different reality, a kingdom reality.God asks us to fight back by choosing to
focus the light of Christ, to shine it into this darkness that surrounds us,
and to set the world on fire, as each and every one of us “magnifies the Lord”
(Luke 1:46).

Monday, November 5, 2012

This is a morning of many possible sermon
topics.It’s the conclusion of our
season of stewardship, and in a few minutes we’ll honor and bless the pledges
we’ve received so far.It’s time for a
quarterly parish meeting, where we’ll update you on our parish’s budget
priorities, finances, and giving patterns.And it’s All Saints’ Sunday, the time we honor the long line of holy men
and women beginning in ages past and continuing to Liam, the new Christian
we’ll baptize this morning.So I guess
I’m supposed to preach on stewardship and the saintliness of offering time,
talent, and treasure to the Lord who gives us all that we have.And all that would have been right and true.

But sometimes, life gets in the way of
what you’re “supposed” to preach, and this week is one of those times.As many of you know, I’ve been out of town this
week – first in Haiti for our mission trip and then at Diocesan Convention.Meanwhile, Hurricane Sandy has beaten and
battered much of the Caribbean and our East Coast, killing 160, destroying
crops in hungry lands, flooding countless homes and businesses, and causing
billions of dollars’ worth of damage.As
we offer our prayers this morning for the saints we’ve known and loved, we
should also remember those who’ve died in this storm and those now struggling to
make their lives whole again.

While you’ve been watching news coverage
of the storm, I’ve been watching Haiti once again – this time, in the aftermath
of a hurricane.On this visit, as
before, I was taken by the sight of the tap-taps.As you may know, tap-taps are what pass for
public transportation in Haiti – vehicles of various sizes, from pick-ups to
school buses.They’re called tap-taps
because that’s how the riders, hanging off the sides and sitting on the top, get
the vehicle to stop.More often than
not, tap-taps carry proclamations of faith, written on the vehicle in
decorative script, often with paintings of Jesus or the Virgin Mary.The statements may be specific Scriptural
citations or devotional phrases like “La Grace de Dieu” (the grace of God) or “Merci
Jesus” (Thank you, Jesus).But on this
trip, I saw a tap-tap proclaiming the deepest theology of Haiti I’ve ever
seen.It read, “Le Dieu des Paradoxes” –
the God of the Paradoxes.That’s the
faith story of Haiti in a nutshell.

This has been a week of paradoxes – for the
eight of us serving in Haiti and certainly for you back in the States.For the missionaries, we went into a context
of deprivation, poverty, and disaster; and we left feeling blessed, guided, and
protected – beginning, dramatically, by leapfrogging over Hurricane Sandy to
get from Florida to Haiti, which had been ravaged by the storm the day before.Meanwhile, for all of you back home, you’ve watched
the paradox of Americans becoming the victims, rather than the responders, to a
natural disaster when the same hurricane turned north and ravaged New Jersey
and New York.The missionaries in Haiti
were in some senses much safer than their friends and relatives back in the Mid-Atlantic
states.

The theme of paradox continues this
morning, as we celebrate a feast of paradoxes – All Saints’ Sunday.As we remember those we love who’ve gone
before us, we see in our minds’ eye those we can no longer see.We rejoice that they live in our hearts while
we rejoice that they’ve found their homes on the other side of eternity.It’s a day marking the presence of the absent
– a paradox, indeed.

On this All Saints’ Sunday, we hear the
story of Lazarus.I love this story –
not just because of Jesus’ miracle in raising the dead but because of the
honest, authentic struggle that leads up to it.Sometimes we forget that this story begins with Jesus knowing that his
friend Lazarus is dying and deciding not
to go do anything to heal him.It seems fairly
heartless; and we hear the bitterness in the voices of both sisters of the dead
man, who independently confront Jesus when he finally arrives, four days too
late.As we pick up the story this morning,
it’s Mary we see pinning Jesus to the wall, saying, “Lord, if you had been
here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).We also see Jesus paying the price, grieving
for his friend’s suffering and for the suffering of his sisters left
behind.And we hear the visitors whispering
to one another, “Couldn’t he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept
this man from dying?” (John 11:37).It’s
the same question we ask all the time about places like Haiti.It’s the same question we ask whenever
something like Hurricane Sandy strikes:Lord, how could you let this happen?Jesus, where were you?Why didn’t you step in and do something?

I’m sure the people in the story were
just as frustrated as we are by the immediate
answer, which is ... no particular answer at all.We get no neat and tidy explanation for the death of Lazarus, or the
suffering in Haiti, or the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy.Instead, it’s more God’s style to respond
with action rather than talk.Jesus
responds by entering into the
suffering, crying with those who mourn, comforting them by showing up in the
pain – and then transforming the tragedy into the seedbed of resurrected
life.Jesus stands before the tomb; and,
against all odds, he commands, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43).It’s the same kind of crazy proclamation we
hear at funerals – when death clearly seems to have carried the day, yet we say
that “life is changed, not ended”
when we die (BCP 382).It’s the same kind
of unexpected end to the entire Scriptural story we heard in the reading from
Revelation today, with God tying the ending to the beginning with a second act
of creation, saying, “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).The answers we get may not be satisfying in
the moment of pain, but God’s pattern of action is far richer than we’d have
any reason to expect: not life and death, but life and death
and life again.

In a week like this one – on the ground
in flooded Haiti or on the ground in flooded New Jersey and New York – it’s
hard to see God making all things new.But
then, God surprises you.A few days ago,
we visited the homes of some students who attend the Episcopal school in Les
Cayes, Haiti, the larger city near our rural school in Maniche.(We tried to go to Maniche, but the flood
waters prevented it until nearly the end of the trip.)In Les Cayes, you see the same kind of
poverty as in the countryside, except that living conditions are worse because
the population density is so much greater.In the city, we stopped at one student’s home – a tin and concrete
shack, six people living in literally two small rooms, crammed next to other
houses just the same.Fetid water oozed down
an open gutter in front of the door.The
family had little more than a few clothes, a charcoal-fire stand, a pot, some
plates, a table, and some odds and ends.“Depressing” doesn’t begin to describe it.But inside the house, I turned around to see
a large piece of thin particleboard tacked to the wall behind the door.It’s the daughter’s chalkboard, and it was
covered with her homework for that day.We talked with her about the Episcopal school she attends.She’s so grateful to be there.She’s one of the top students in her
class.Her favorite subject is math, and
she plans to be a nurse someday.

You see the story play out again and
again.Another student we visited wants
to become a doctor.Another, a
lawyer.Many want to become nurses and
help the people they see suffering all around them.In the midst of next to nothing, in the
breeding ground of despair, there is hope.

The God we worship specializes in
bringing light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, hope out of despair.The God we worship will heal the people of
New York and New Jersey through the presence of Jesus suffering alongside them,
and then empower them to rebuild their cities and their lives.The God we worship empowers us, with our
partners in Haiti, to build the kingdom one child’s life at a time, redeeming
the possibilities for a little girl in a two-room shack by transforming the
poverty of her present into the fullness of her future.The God we worship promises to all the saints
a “yet more glorious day” (Hymnal 1982
287) when “mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4) as
heaven and earth are reunited, and all creation returns to the fullness of what
God intended “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1).The God we worship leads us into the waters of baptism, into Jesus’ own death,
so that we might rise with him, with Lazarus, and with all the saints into the
life of the heavenly kingdom, now and always.

The God we worship is the God of the
Paradoxes.And at the end of the day,
all we can do is name the deep and divine reality we can barely comprehend:
that beginnings come from endings, that gain requires loss, that emptiness
creates the space for God to fill.As
St. Francis prayed centuries ago, still we see and marvel at God’s stunning
inversion of blessing: that “it is in giving that we receive; it is in
pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal
life” (BCP 833).

Thursday, November 1, 2012

“You see, we have a problem.” – Worker at Walls International Guest
House, Port-au-Prince

To truly enjoy this day, you
have to start near the end.Sarah Kieffer
and I left this afternoon, ahead of the rest of our group, because we each had
to be home early for other commitments.We made it to Port-au-Prince after a long afternoon’s drive from Cayes,
and Pere Colbert finally found Walls International Guest House, where our
adventure began several days ago.After
checking in (and convincing the man in the office that we really did need two
rooms because Sarah and I weren’t married), Zo the driver, Sarah, and I took
our bags to the two rooms.Zo dutifully
locked the door to my room as we left so my things would be safe; and Sarah
locked her door, too.I hadn’t received
room keys when we checked in, so I went back to the office to get them.“Keys?” the attendant asked.“You don’t need keys.Everything is safe here.”The locked metal gate, 10-foot concrete wall
topped with razor wire, and the guard with the loaded shotgun made me think he
was probably right, in a sense; but we were still locked out of our rooms.So they sent a worker over with a ring of
keys that only could have come from a movie – at least a hundred different
keys, probably every key to every lock ever installed on any door in this guesthouse’s
history.The worker tried about five,
got frustrated, and took out a screwdriver.Within two minutes, he had broken into my room – not only are keys unnecessary;
so are locks.The worker had more
trouble with Sarah’s door, which had a strip of wood trim obstructing the
screwdriver’s access to the latch and the strike plate.He worked on it for a few minutes (without
ever trying a key) and left to get more tools.He came back with a small crowbar and pried off the wood trim.He still couldn’t get the lock to give, and
he ended up forcing the screwdriver between the latch and the strike plate with
sufficient force to break the lock and tear the strike plate out of the
doorjamb.In this, he succeeded in
opening the door.Without any apparent awareness
of the absurdity of this situation, he then calmly set to the task of trying to
repair the damage, replacing the trim and hammering the strike plate back into
the doorjamb.Of course, the door no
longer closed, so he pounded on the door’s hinges, which apparently had been
pulled out in the break-in.This allowed
the door to close – but the latch no longer caught in the strike plate.The worker stopped, looked at me, and said,
“We go upstairs to another room.You
see, we have a problem.”

Indeed.Look around Haiti, and you find truer words
were never spoken.For all its holy
paradoxes and charming personalities, Haiti is also a place where inexplicably
silly things happen for no good reason.A guesthouse gives you a room whose door has a lock, posts no sign
telling you not to lock the door, has
no key available to open the door, and destroys the door in the process of opening
it.It’s a story that plays out over and
over again.Good intentions or standard
practice are implemented halfheartedly or half way; then people have to deal
with the consequences.Roads are made
through running rivers.Buildings are
erected well enough to stand for a few years, but no one can afford to fix them
once they begin to crumble.A highway
detour is made when a bridge becomes unsafe; and instead of fixing the bridge,
they pave the detour – which involves another water crossing.“This is how things are in Haiti,” you
hear.But it can’t be how things remain.

We had a fabulous conversation
last night about what a missional response to the enigma of Haiti might look
like.Is it appropriate to take the
perspective, as people have for years, that “something is better than nothing”;
or does that actually result in nothing in the long run?Is there value in foreign mission groups
coming into Haiti for a week to build outhouses or cuddle babies, and then
leave?Experience (by St. Andrew’s and
countless other groups that have been in this work for some time) has shown
that something often ends up being nothing more than cause for the missionaries
to feel good about their work and have a little Indiana Jones moment in the
back of a pickup at 60 miles per hour.

What counts here, and probably
in all missional enterprises, is longevity of commitment and intentionality of
relationship.If we send money to fund
teacher salaries and buy books, that’s great – if it’s the start of something
more.Even better is coming to see how
the teachers are doing with the books, and asking them what else they
need.We certainly have ideas to offer,
as the preschool seminar this year and last clearly show.But we also have to be humble enough to ask
them what works – even if our learning is as small as the insight that glue
sticks really don’t work here but bottles of glue do.If we take seriously the idea that we’re
partners in the missional enterprise – specific people sent into relationship with
other specific people – then we have to take seriously the implications: that
both sides of the partnership are equal, and both partners will be changed by
the experience of relationship.Even if
we hold the purse strings, that doesn’t mean that “our school” in Maniche is St.
Andrew’s school.It means we’re
co-creators, with the people at the school and with God, of the new future
awaiting the children who will one day lead Maniche and Haiti on a new path.

Here’s a story to make this concrete.First, some background:We spent this morning driving, once again –
this time looking for an eastern route to Maniche that might allow us to get
there despite the flooding.We drove
through Cavillion, where another U.S. Episcopal church sponsors a school, and
headed toward the mountains from the third direction in as many tries.We got to a river crossing – the first of at
least two – and found the same thing we’d found the day before.Crossing would have been a foolish gesture,
and this time, only one member of our group advocated taking the heroic
leap.We drove back to the guesthouse in
Cayes, had lunch, and talked about what might be next.Mary Ann insightfully noted that we’d be
well-served to enter into the conversation prayerfully, asking God to guide our
discernment as we struggled to see how we might be of value here if we couldn’t
cross the river.I suggested that we
look for God’s direction in the activities we’d found to be most holy and life-giving
over the past few days – ways we’d seen God active in the things we’d done so
far, even if they weren’t exactly the things we’d planned.The conversation included many moments of
revelation and insight, but none as rich as Chris Nazar’s offering:“My heart has been touched most by talking
with our teachers [a few of whom we’d encountered in Maniche yesterday], even
if only for a few minutes.I count these
people as my friends, and I want to spend time hearing about how things are
going with them.Let’s go back to
Maniche, even if we can’t get to the school, and sit down with them so we can spend
time with our partners.”It’s not about
the deliverables, as valuable as the items were that the donkeys carried
yesterday.It’s about the relationship
and the effect of that relationship on helping kids prepare for a life beyond
subsistence farming on their fathers’ lands.

Tomorrow, Sarah and I will get
on planes and head back to the States.We will fly back into our own country damaged by the same hurricane we
hurdled to get to Haiti a week ago.For
Sarah, the hurricane whose aftermath she’s seen in Haiti will become intensely
personal as she travels back to Connecticut, God willing – though, through the
bits we’ve picked up on Haitian radio, it sounds like scores have died, and
millions are without power, and Sarah most likely will not fly out of Ft.
Lauderdale tomorrow.Most likely, I will
fly without too much difficulty, given that my path is through Miami and Dallas
to Kansas City.As we make our ways
home, our compatriots in this mission trip will drive back to Maniche tomorrow,
uncertain what they’ll find.They may
simply gather whichever teachers they can find, buy them Cokes in the market,
and talk under a banana tree.But Pere
Colbert told Sarah and me he thinks there may be a decent chance they can get to Maniche tomorrow, and get to
the river’s edge, and ride a couple of donkeys across the water, two by two, so
they might have at least one day at this school with which we partner in
mission.They won’t be able to
accomplish their agenda:photographing
all 200 students and collecting information about them, observing classes,
doing art projects, teaching about great Haitian artists, holding
parent-teacher meetings, and visiting students’ homes.But they will show up to be in relationship
in whatever way God makes available in that moment.

And from the God of the
Paradoxes comes this last chuckle:The
donkeys for the river crossing will be arranged by a cell-phone call.

The schedule
called for us to head up the mountain today, see the students and teachers,
bring five duffels of supplies, begin taking pictures of the students, work
with the construction foreman to get the school walls sanded for painting, and
have an after-school meeting with the teachers.Only one of those purposes was accomplished.The hurricane is still swelling rivers
between Cayes and Maniche.

There are three
river crossings between Cayes and Maniche, if you take the regular route.The largest river is just before you get to
the school, and we knew it would be high.(In fact, as I said, we didn’t even try to go to Maniche for church
yesterday because of the likelihood of high water.)This morning, we came to the first river
crossing, just north of Cayes.It’s
usually a little unnerving, driving the truck into the water, about 20 feet
across.This time, we couldn’t even
try.The locals weren’t even trying.The water was simply too fast and too deep.Only 15 minutes out of town, and it looked
like our mission for the day was cancelled before it even began.

This led to an
interesting conversation about, “Now what?”One contingent wanted to plan for a morning hike up the mountain
tomorrow, once we could pack more water and ensure everyone had both water
shoes and tennis shoes.The problem is
that it’s about five miles of switchbacks up to Maniche – and then, of course,
five miles back down again – on a road of rocks, gravel, and mud.But still, the heroic missional impulse said,
“We’ve come this far; let’s give it a try.”Another contingent felt the risks were too great, particularly given
that we hadn’t trained or planned for a 10-mile mountain hike in a foreign
country.A compromise was developing in
which those who wanted to go would plan to hike up the mountain early the next
morning, and the rest would find something else to do.

The dilemma was
resolved, however, when Pere Colbert spoke with someone on the phone and found
an alternate route up the mountain, one that would take us along several more
miles of even worse road than we usually traveled – and still not solve the
possible issue with the major river crossing at Maniche, just before the
school.So we took the chance in the
hopeful thought that trying was better than giving up.The long way to Maniche involved some small
amount of graded road under construction and even a few stretches with blacktop
– as smooth as in the States.But soon,
this gave way to roads like riverbeds, except these riverbeds ran up and down
at incredible grades, testing the integrity of the overloaded Toyota 4x4 pickup.After a couple of hours and one relatively
uneventful river crossing, we bounced into Maniche, rejoicing.

The rejoicing
stopped as we came to the end of the road, at the river just before the
school.Literally, we came to the end of
the road.It wasn’t supposed to end
there, but now it did.With the
hurricane, the river had risen so high that it had washed out the road that
once led down the bank and onto a gravel bar.Normally, the road continues down that gravel bar for a fifth of a mile
or so; then you drive through the river and come up on the opposite bank.Not anymore.Now, the river literally had swept the bank away, and the road simply
stopped at the edge, about five feet up from the water and probably eight feet
up from where the gravel bar had been.We were not driving across this river.

This led to another
missional dilemma:We’ve come this far; why
not just wade through the water to get to the school?We saw local people doing it.Some in our group wanted to try it, too.The water was about waist high.We would have been soaked, but hey – it’s all
for the kids.But again, there is the
issue of cost vs. benefit.What would be
the benefit of making a waist-high river crossing and trudging the remaining
half-mile to get to the school?It
seemed to me the benefit was mostly for us – so that we could feel good about
having gone the extra mile to accomplish that which we had purposed.But what would be the value for the teachers
and the students?What would we be
bringing them through our heroics?We
would prove that we cared, certainly – in a very outward and visible way.But what if one of us was caught in the
stream?What if one of us fell?I said something about being in the position
of standing up in church and explaining how one member of our group had been
seriously hurt on the mission trip because we decided to be heroic and walk through
a flooded river.But the resolution was
made clearer by Pere Colbert, who reminded us of the active presence of cholera
in Haiti, which is borne through fecal contamination transmitted through water
or by hand-to-mouth.Basically, it
wasn’t just waist-deep water – it was waste-deep water, too; and the risk of
walking through it most definitely outweighed the benefits.

So we found
ourselves standing on one side of the river, virtually able to see the school
on the other side, unable to get there.

The next
missional dilemma was this:What do we
do with the five duffels of school supplies we had hauled up the mountain?Assuming that we’d be able to come back to
the school later in the trip, we had to off-load them now because we had
another pickup-full of supplies for painting the school.We considered storing the school supplies
somewhere in Maniche but eventually decided to strap them on the backs of two donkeys,
who are accustomed to walking through this river, carrying goods to and from
market.As we stood there – carefully discerning
which bags of supplies should ride where on a donkey’s pack, and whether some
of the cargo (especially the 50 or so books for the school’s library) was too
valuable for donkey transport through a swollen river – as we stood there
debating which bags should be taken and which shouldn’t, the blasé donkey
dropped a load that splattered on the legs of the wise blans, who’d been standing too close to the business end of a farm
animal.So much for our capacities for
discernment.Although some members of
the group were fairly upset that the books were being risked in a water
crossing, we offered a prayer for safe transport and sent the donkeys on their
way.They made it just fine, and none of
our materials got wet, thanks be to God.Unfortunately, the donkey’s owner couldn’t say as much.He apparently had put his cell phone in his
shirt on top of the pack, and the shirt slid off into the river.So much for his capacities for discernment.And I like to think that the Lord did chuckle at the wisdom of these
pinnacles of creation.

So, with the
supplies safely delivered, we revised our plans and decided to go visit the
secondary schools in Maniche where several of our graduates are continuing
their studies.We wanted to find out
whether our students measure up to students in other local schools: Are they
adequately prepared by the education we offer?We stopped at two schools, spoke with the headmasters, and came away
with very good news.Our students we
performing at least as well as those from other schools, and some were doing
much better than their classmates.In
fact, one of the headmasters said they look forward to students from St.
Augustine (our school) because the school has such a good reputation.It was great to get the information from
unbiased sources; the third-party credibility carries a lot of weight.

In the last
secondary-school visit, our daily miracles continued (building on the divine
success of the donkey crossing).First was
the miracle of hospitality.Apparently,
the headmaster took seriously the Biblical command to treat strangers as if he were
“entertaining angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).We had asked if we might stop in his schoolyard to eat the lunch that
had been packed for us at Hosanna House.Oh, no – he took us upstairs to his own home in the floor over the
classrooms.He ushered us into a sitting
room and dining room that were immaculate, set to receive company, with marble
tile on the floor and lovely decorations on the walls.(Even better in the moment was the fact that
the bathroom was similarly appointed; and it had been four hours since the
truck ride began.)Miracle #2 was of
lesser grandeur but just as much appreciated:No boiled hot dogs this time but the tasty chili con carne that Hosanna
House packs on good days.Miracle #3 was
the best of all.The lunch packed for us
was intended to feed a group of eight.We had eight Styrofoam plates, eight forks, one bag of the omnipresent
stale hot-dog-bun bread, and eight packages of crackers.But by that time in our day’s journey, we
were now 16, with the addition of Pere Colbert, a translator, the construction
supervisor, our headmaster Samuel, the 5th grade teacher Homer, and
other hangers-on.So, it was time for
Jesus and the feeding of the 5,000.We
shared plates; we slopped up chili with bread and crackers rather than forks;
we emptied out our backpacks of the protein bars and peanut-butter crackers we
had brought.Everyone was served,
everyone had enough, and there were leftovers of everything.We shouldn’t have been surprised – this is
not exactly a new storyline.

Then, on the
way back from Maniche to Cayes, we stopped at a local tourist attraction.(Yes, there are such things in Haiti.)Tucked away in the mountains, down an even
worse road than the previously even-worse road we’d been taking, was a
waterfall – a glorious waterfall.It’s
significant enough that the Haitian government is in the process of building a
concrete viewing platform there (though, frustratingly, not doing anything yet
with the path down the muddy hill leading to it).The scene was glorious, and I realized why
they give you raincoats at Niagara Falls.We stood there, getting wet, enjoying the cool break, and marveling at
the contrast that is so deeply a part of the Haitian reality:The presence of breathtaking beauty around
one corner and squalor around the next.Of course, it’s all about what you choose to focus on, because neither
one defines the country.Instead, what
defines the country is the reality that God is in the midst of all of it –
creating the beauty, suffering with the poor, inspiring those who would change
broken and corrupt systems.As that
alternate Lord’s Prayer puts it, “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver.”That is the God who is known and worshipped
deep and wide here, from churches to tap-taps to signs at cashier windows.The fundamental reality of Haiti, maybe, is
this:that God is.

The morning began early, getting
ready for the 7 a.m. service at Pere Colbert’s church in Cayes.Akenson, the superintendent of the Episcopal
schools in the Cayes area, came and picked us up, and we got there just as the
procession was assembling.Colbert found
me an alb and stole, and the service began as soon as I could get vested.It’s always interesting serving at a
different altar but even more so when it’s in a different country.Basically, the Episcopal liturgy is the same
in Haiti as in Kansas City.But, of
course, there are variations in local custom, not to mention the liturgical
staging when you have eight acolytes sharing the small space with you.At least I didn’t run into anybody.And apparently my sermon was OK.

The liturgy today was “high,” at
least by our standards – incense and Sanctus bells.I haven’t seen incense used here before, and
I’m not sure why it was used today (it wasn’t a feast day).But the smoke certainly filled the sanctuary
as the acolytes kneeled before the altar, swinging the thurible all the way
through the Eucharistic prayer.It was
glorious, the prayers of the saints ascending with the smoke, connecting this
worship with praise before God’s heavenly throne, as faithful people have been
doing for centuries upon centuries.An
interesting juxtaposition with the “high” mass was the vibrant, rhythmic,
contemporary music being offered by the two lead singers, as well as the
bassist, percussionist, African drum player, and electronic keyboardist.The room was rocking, especially when the
choir came up to do their numbers.The
sound echoes through the concrete room and I’m sure the streets all around us,
too.No one nearby could have missed the
fact that the Episcopalians were having church.The musical style wouldn’t need to be the same, but I would love to hear
the sound of singing filling the nave of St. Andrew’s like that.

Since we can’t go to Maniche for
church today because of the height of the river we’d have to cross, we’re at
bit at loose ends right now.Lunch will
happen in an hour or so; then we’re going to see if we can do some home visits,
talking with the parents of children attending the Episcopal school in Cayes to
learn more about their lives and to bless their homes.This evening, we have dinner with Pere
Colbert and his family, so we’ll be treated to a feast.It’s one of those Haiti days when you have to
sit back and work with the day, rather than trying too hard to manage it.Not a bad attitude for a day that’s supposed
to be God’s anyway.

9:26 p.m.

We’re back from Pere Colbert’s,
and the day has been very long.I need
to go to bed, but I want to remember a few things from the afternoon and
evening before they fly out of my head.

The home visits in Cayes were
fascinating.Sarah, Mary Ann, Chris, and
I went with Akinson, the superintendent of the Episcopal schools in the Cayes
area.Among other things, this meant
translation was even more interesting than usual because Akinson doesn’t speak
English.Fortunately, his French is
good, as is Sarah’s.Sarah, whose church
in Connecticut partners with St. Sauveur in Cayes, wanted to talk with some of
the parents of her school’s students.We
ended up visiting five or six homes, which was enough to give us a good taste
of family life here.

The homes are basically
appointed like those out in the countryside near Maniche, and the same
socioeconomic standards apply.If you
have a floor of dirt or gravel, you’re fairly poor; if you have a concrete
floor, you’re not doing as badly.The
difference with the countryside, of course, is the population density.These tiny tin-and-concrete boxes are crammed
together like blocks, and you sometimes walk over one person’s front step to
reach another person’s home.One family,
fairly typical, had six people living in two rooms, each about 8x8.The atypical thing about this family was that
the wall by the doorway was covered with a piece of thin particleboard
functioning as a chalkboard, and one of the kids’ homework was all over
it.This child is the top student in her
grade (fourth, maybe), and her family obviously values the education she is
receiving.She wants to be a nurse, and
she likes math best among her classes.With the sewer water flowing in front of the house and the conditions
ripe for the spread of disease (cholera is very active in Haiti), she will have
plenty of work awaiting her.Anyway, the
families were all surprised to see us, to say the least, but very willing to
talk about the school and their children.Some things are true regardless of your culture.

Back at Hosanna House, we met
with Colbert and Akinson about several issues at the school in Maniche – the
kids’ annual tests and the extent to which the exams reflect the mandatory
curriculum, our desire for regular updates on test scores and matriculation,
whether teachers should be paid more based on student performance, the efficacy
of our preschool seminar (to what degree teachers were actually using what we
had taught), the pressures parents put on the school to pass kids on to the
next grade even if the kids’ performance doesn’t merit it.Once again, some issues aren’t that much
different from one social context to the next.

This evening, Colbert and his
wife, Monese, hosted all of us for a feast at the rectory.There was twice as much food as we could eat
and an incredible variety – fried plantain, fresh avocado, sautéed conch,
roasted goat, beans and rice, French fries, Haitian pizza (I have no idea what
was on it), fried akra (a tuber, different from okra), macaroni and cheese with
sardines mixed into it, cucumbers, and sliced tomatoes.Tomorrow, the food quality will definitely
taper off.Lunch will be packed by
Hosanna House, and the last Hosanna House lunch was hot dogs and onions, boiled
until the hot dogs shriveled and then left to sit for six hours in the back of
the truck, served with stale bread.It
rivals the Haiti lunch that still lives in memory – ketchup and onion
sandwiches on white bread.It’s an
inconsistent culinary experience, to say the least.

The paradoxes of Haiti continue,
though in a more amusing way than usual tonight.We pulled through our guesthouse gates this
evening to find a raucous party, complete with a band, dancing, and a bouncer
wielding a club that looked like a medieval weapon, with spikes on the
end.This took place at a guesthouse
that’s part of a huge Baptist mission here, Bethanie Ministries.The party was a wedding reception, and I
feared for a while that this might be the first Saturday night ever when a
Baptist party kept a group of Episcopalians from getting their rest before going
to church the next morning.Thankfully,
the good Baptists starting heading home about 8:30, and we should all sleep
soundly as we await the morning Sabbath.

As I said, because we postponed
the preschool seminar scheduled for this morning, we spent much of the morning
organizing materials for the seminar and shopping in Cayes.We went through the streets of downtown on a
Saturday, so we saw the city in the midst of market day.The streets were lined with people who had
set out books on card tables or hundreds of shoes on the ground, or who had simply
made a fire and cooked something – trying to sell whatever they had that
someone else might buy.The Haitian
economy basically produces no goods.Almost nothing other than food and alcohol is produced here, so whatever
commerce there is happens with goods that come into Port au Prince on container
ships and then are distributed to the outlying regions by truck and car along
the few roads that run from one end of the country to the other.There is a great entrepreneurial spirit –
it’s amazing what people can do with used and seemingly junked goods to get
more life out of them and convince other folks to buy them.People are certainly not lazy here.However, they
have almost no opportunity to find capital, or materials, or production
facilities, or anything that might lead to economic development.

And yet, while all this is true,
we found a sign stuck to the cashier’s window at the “office supply” store we
visited this morning.In bold-face
letters, it proclaimed (in French):

In all things, God works for good for those who believe and are called
according to his purposes.– Romans
8:28

So the paradoxes continue.

At the other end of the paradox
spectrum from Romans 8:28 in an office-supply store is the national
near-monopoly in cell-phone service, Digicel.Digicel is everywhere – its signs show up along even the most remote
roads, its towers reach up from mountains you’d think only a goat could access,
its marketing materials (t-shirts, umbrellas, tote bags, you name it) appear on
the streets everywhere.Today, we saw
Digicel’s influence taken to a new level.The company has begun placing street signs at intersections in Cayes,
which is helpful given that there’s no functioning government to take on tasks
like this.Not surprisingly, the street
signs are in the omnipresent Digicel red, and the jaunty tops on the poles
carry the Digicel logo. The billboards all
over the country might as well say, “Haiti – sponsored by Digicel.”I
believe that if a group oriented toward the kingdom of God bought out Digicel,
it could gain the resources to become the operative national government and completely
remake the nation. “Episcocel,” here we
come.

After our seminar planning and
shopping, we visited Pere Colbert’s church in Cayes, which is in an ongoing
capital campaign as it simultaneously adds a large room onto its school and
expands its worship space to accommodate another 150 to 200 people.These are good signs.Our only concern had to do with design and
construction:Adding floors to existing concrete
buildings is very common in Haiti, but let’s just say the stability looks a
little dubious, especially given the results of the 2010 earthquake.Pere Colbert assures us that building
standards have changed for the good following the earthquake.OK.But I also know that this is a culture where you’re surprised to see a
building ever be completely finished, or with its floor tiles laid all the way
to each corner of the room….

We ended the day with a lovely
Saturday activity – a late afternoon and early evening at the beach at Port
Salut, about an hour away from Cayes.The day was perfect, the beach was glorious, the grilled lobster and
fried plantains were exceptional.And we
ended our time there sitting in a semi-circle, at sunset, praying
Compline.Sarah Kieffer – who comes from
an Episcopal Church in Connecticut that partners with Pere Colbert’s church in
Cayes and who joined us in Ft. Lauderdale as part of our group – had brought an
alternate version of the Lord’s Prayer, from the New Zealand Prayer Book.It seemed particularly fitting for prayer on
a beach, as we watched the wonder of sun and clouds and sea.It’s a good way to end this day, too (though
traditionalists no doubt will cringe):

“God of the Paradoxes” may be
the most theologically astute proclamation I’ve ever seen in Haiti.The tap-taps – vehicles of various sizes,
from pick-ups to school buses – nearly always carry religious proclamations of
some kind, written on the vehicle in some decorative script, often accompanied
by cartoonlike paintings of Jesus or the Virgin Mary.The statements may be specific Scriptural
citations (I saw Psalm 23 today, as well as something from Lamentations, which
seems particularly apropos).Sometimes
they’re encouraging phrases in French such as “La Grace de Dieu” (the grace of
God) or in Kreyol, such as “Bondye Bon” (God is good).Sometimes they’re less religiously oriented –
my personal favorite is, “Just Do It.”But today, driving out of Port au Prince, we were greeted by a tap-tap
proclaiming, “Le Dieu des Paradoxes.”That captures a theology of Haiti like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Every time I think I have some
insight about this place, other evidence comes along that contradicts what
seems clear.Haitians’ sense of
nationality arose out of the experience of slavery, rebellion, and
marginalization by the international community; but they reject comparisons
with the African American experience of ongoing struggle against historical
oppression because they call the shots in their own nation.Haiti carries poverty like a millstone around
its neck, but people are gracious and giving, practicing abundant
hospitality.Haiti has a communications
infrastructure that enables a huge percentage of the population to have cell
phones, but there is no infrastructure whatsoever to deal with trash in the
streets (other than life-threatening flooding that washes trash to the few
sewers and then clogs them beyond hope).Life here is about as difficult as life gets on this planet, but people
understand God to be deeply, profoundly present and good – not to mention
absolutely deserving of our trust.There’s a tie here to other profound paradoxes that are definitional to
Christianity:the first shall be last
and the last shall be first; blessed (literally in Scripture, “happy”) are the
poor and the mourners, for they shall inherit the kingdom and find joy; it is
in dying that we find eternal life.None
of these statements, about life in Haiti or the life of the kingdom, make a bit
of sense the way we look at things.And
yet, they are profoundly true – true enough that people have staked their lives
on those truths for thousands of years.God of the Paradoxes, indeed.

9:16 p.m.

As is always the case in Haiti,
our plans have changed.We were
scheduled to offer an early-childhood education seminar tomorrow, as the group
did last year – continuing education for the preschool and kindergarten
teachers at all the Episcopal schools in this part of Haiti (about 35 teachers).Because of Hurricane Sandy, the teachers
can’t travel yet to get into Les Cayes to attend the seminar, so it’s been
postponed until Thursday (after I leave, frustratingly enough).So tomorrow, we’ll go into Cayes to procure some
supplies (a bookcase for the school, Bibles to inscribe and give our graduating
students, a Haitian cell phone, etc.).We’ll also prepare the teachers’ packets for the seminar and assemble
the teaching materials (felt boards, soil and seeds for a hands-on gardening
lesson, blocks, and books).Then, in the
afternoon, we’ll go out to Port Salut to the beach for an evening of grilled lobster,
Compline on the beach, and a fabulous sunset.Some parts of the experience of Haiti are pretty nice.

Tonight’s Compline was
wonderful, too.After dinner – and many
hours today of intense conversations about specific details of our mission, how
much we pay teachers, whether they should be paid for performance, the
importance of listening to the teachers about the efficacy of teacher training,
how to take best practices in early-childhood education into a third-world system
rooted in didactic instruction and memorization – after dinner, we sat on the
veranda and reflected on where God had been in our day.Some of us saw God in the resolve of poor
Haitians standing on the roadside in the wake of a hurricane, refusing to give
up as their homes and fields stand flooded.Some of us saw God in the gifts of the Body of Christ revealed in the
somewhat motley crew that our group of missionaries always is.Some of us saw God in the blessings of the
skills of our driver, Zo, who negotiated fallen boulders, the effects of
mudslides, mountain roads with people standing in them, and rain, and still
managed to get us to Cayes safely.Along
with us, he got all our baggage there safely, too, including 12 duffels of
supplies carefully wrapped up on the top of the van.They were mostly dry – and, remarkably, not thrown to the ground – after a
grueling, jarring four-hour drive.Finally, some of us saw God in our gathering around the table, hearing
one member apologize to another for an unintentional slight, hearing one member
speak eloquently about the family that’s forming around the table, hearing one
member pour out her heart in frustration over the insoluble realities of
Haitian life.In these, and many other,
ways, God was there.So we prayed
Compline, sang along with a recording of chant from the worship of Taize, enjoyed
a cold Prestige, and are now ready for bed.Thank you, Lord, for a day of paradoxical blessing.